Oklahoma Sooners are teasing that one of their craziest experiments with Jaren Kanak may be working out great
The Oklahoma Sooners didn't recruit the tight end position maybe as well as they hoped for this offseason and the offseasons prior. Coming into this 2025 spring football period, the Sooners are left without a guy who's considered elite, or even great. So, they did something crazy. They tried a crazy experiment with a defensive […]
The Oklahoma Sooners didn't recruit the tight end position maybe as well as they hoped for this offseason and the offseasons prior. Coming into this 2025 spring football period, the Sooners are left without a guy who's considered elite, or even great.
So, they did something crazy. They tried a crazy experiment with a defensive player, and from what we have seen, it may be working out way better than anyone had originally anticipated.
Sooners' move Jaren Kanak from LB to TE, and it may be working
Jaren Kanak enrolled early in January 2022 and began his college career as a linebacker.
In his freshman year of 2022, Kanak appeared in all 13 games, primarily on special teams, recording 24 tackles, a forced fumble, and a fumble recovery. As a sophomore in 2023, he started nine games, finishing with 62 tackles, 6 tackles for loss, and 2 sacks, though he lost his starting role late in the season. By 2024, his playing time dropped, with only 11 tackles in 11 games as he struggled to break into a crowded linebacker group featuring players like Danny Stutsman and Kip Lewis.
Kanak is known as the jokester and the class clown on the team. He has a social media presence because of his ability to joke around and just be funny. In fact, Oklahoma even let him run their football social media for a day because of how funny he is. And, let's just say he may or may not have said some things that may have or may not have gotten that privilege taken away from him.
All jokes aside though, Kanak is an athlete, a great athlete, too. So, we knew the switch would be possible. But, if this is actually working out well, and he's playing very good, even at his size, which is a bit undersized for the tight end position, then this was a genius move, considering the Sooners had a big need in that room, and a still very crowded linebacker room, even after some players transferring out.
Now, this is spring football, and sometimes just based on a picture, we really don't know if this was a situation set up for the offense to succeed, or something that was genuinely difficult for the offense. We just don't know the situation, but we do know that it looks like a touchdown by Kanak in the Sooners' Instagram post.
Only time will tell if the experiment will work in the rugged SEC, though.
